Apple's new iPhone 7 smartphones will be available to the public on Friday, September 16. Before then Apple has given a number of hand-picked publications an early look at the handset to get to grips with the changes made in the latest smartphone.
The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are both improvements on last year's models. Many of these improvements are on the circuit board and not easily seen by the public, or feel awkward and challenging. Apple is projecting these decisions as 'courageous' and a way to drag technology into the future - a future that Cupertino would love to define. The truth lies somewhere in between.
Reviews of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus handsets will be published in the next few days, but for now, let's see what the internet's first responders think of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
The Same Design On The Outside
The obvious touchstone for the iPhone 7 is that the design of the handset is identical to the iPhone models released in 2014 and 2015. Apple has spent years building up the idea of a two-year tick-tock design, the iPhone 7 has broken that covenant. The reasoning behind that pause will likely not be apparent until we see the 2017 iPhone model - the tenth anniversary iPhone is expected to bring a new design to the smartphone with new material. In that sense the iPhone 7 is a bridge phone, keeping sales solid while waiting for the revolution. The design of the iPhone 6 family works, so Tim Cook and his team have stuck with that for another year. Nilay Patel for The Verge:
Apart from the water resistance, there are three main external differences between the 6 and 7: first, the antenna lines on the back have been tweaked and colored to blend into the body on the matte black and glossy jet black models, which is a welcome refinement... Second, the camera bump has been enlarged and more artfully curved into the rear casing, which looks particularly handsome on the smaller phone with a single camera. And third — here it is again — there’s no headphone jack.
We'll come on to the headphone jack in a moment, because I do want to pick out one point on the multiple shades of black, with matt black and jet black on offer. Patel once more:
And if you get a jet black model, you’ll want to get it into a case immediately — my jet black review unit scratched and scuffed almost instantly, and the only time it’s remained fingerprint-free is when we literally handled it with white gloves for the photo and video shoots accompanying this review. Apple is being unusually open about the propensity of the jet black finish to scratch, but beyond that, I’d get the matte black anyway — it just looks meaner.
I'm less inclined to give Apple a pass on the jet black color. It may look impressive and shiny, it may offer a better tactile experience, but when the manufacturer tells you that you really need a case, I wonder if style has been given more of an input than quality control.
It All Comes Down To The (Lack Of) The Headphone Jack
The elephant in the room is actually not there. Apple's decision to remove the headphone jack is the big discussion point around the iPhone 7 - it's one that the public can easily understand, and everyone will have an opinion. Andrew Cunningham lays out the case for the defence on Ars Technica:
The headphone jack is old, but it’s also a widely-used standard that’s so entrenched that you can just assume it will be there in almost anything you buy. And it’s been that way for the entire lives of most of the people who are thinking about and writing about iPhones. I can plug the same headphones into a 1989 Game Boy and a 2015 iPhone 6S as well as the entertainment system on a multimillion dollar passenger plane. People regularly bring up things like the floppy disk, the optical drive, the 30-pin connector, or even Flash when they talk about the headphone jack, but the scale of the headphone jack’s entrenchment is on an entirely different level.
Apple can force the adoption of a wireless world by removing the headphone jack and having everyone switch to solutions such as its AirPods. Steve Kovach for Business Insider on why this could be Apple's ultimate aim:
By double tapping one of the AirPods, you can activate Siri and use it just as you normally would. Although Siri still isn’t as robust as some other assistants, I was still able to do a lot with just my voice. Checking and sending text messages. Getting weather and sports alerts. Making a phone call. Siri is already at the point where you can do almost everything you want to do without looking at your phone, and the AirPods make using those features seamless.
Consider this the first step towards a future where we no longer have to stare at a screen to get things done.
The cynic in me wonders if Apple has made this change now so that the loss of the headphone jack in next year's iPhone is 'the way it has always done things' as opposed to becoming the lightning conductor that it has proven to be. The wired headphones and 3.5mm adapter in the box will help the transition, Apple will absorb the criticism, and next year the market will be where Apple needs it to be for a voice-powered world built around Siri and wireless headphones.
Where's The Home Key?
The other change is the home button. It still retains the functionality of TouchID, reachability, double tapping, long pressing, and the like, it's just that there is no physical movement under the thumb. David Pierce's feelings probably echo that of many:
But I cannot, for the life of me, get used to the iPhone 7’s new home button. It’s not a button anymore, just a capacitive surface that uses haptic buzzes and taps to provide feedback. That’s great for the longevity of your phone, since the home button tends to break before anything else. It’s even really cool in some places on the iPhone, lending a certain physicality to on-screen stuff by buzzing when you get to the end of a list or rattling like an actual machine gun when you fire upon the unsuspecting enemy. But when I press to unlock my phone, my thumb vibrates like it’s about to dent the glass. It’s not like it ruins the phone, but I miss the click.
Assuming that Apple is moving to an all-glass chassis and cover for the 2017 iPhone, the switch to a virtual home button is happening now to acclimatize the consumers and the geekerati to the change. All the pain is being front-loaded while all the candy is being held back until 2017.
Next: The camera, the chips, and the conclusion...
Smile For Both Of The Cameras
While discussions over the static design, new finishes, and audio decisions are valid, I think it's impossible to argue that the highlight of the iPhone 7 family is the dual-lens camera on the iPhone 7 Plus, even if Apple is moving the goalposts on some long-accepted definitions in the camera lens world. Over to TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino:
This is quite simply the most sophisticated camera and image processor pairing ever seen in a smartphone or any camera period. There have been a couple of other applications of dual camera setups in phones, but the execution is crude by comparison.
First, the hardware. You have a standard f1.8 aperture 28mm equivalent wide angle and a “telephoto” f2.5 aperture 56mm lens. Both use the same capture sensor, but the telephoto has its own set of lenses to fit the focal length.
A 56mm lens, by the way, is not a telephoto. Telephoto lenses are generally accepted to start at around 80-100mm and go up from there. But that’s what Apple calls it, and it’s easier to refer to it as that rather than giving it another name, so that’s what I’m going to call it here. It will hurt every time I type telephoto, but somehow I will make it through the pain — and it’s certainly a longer, more magnifying lens than the 28mm wide angle.
The smaller iPhone 7 may not have the dual-lens camera of the phablet, but it does have one vital hardware addition that you won't find on the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S... optical image stabilisation. Daring Fireball's Jon Gruber:
The iPhone 7 now has OIS, for both stills and video. It works great. Side-by-side with my old iPhone 6S, I got noticeably better photos at an outdoor family gathering at dusk. I got noticeably better photos shooting indoors at night. And video shot while walking around is noticeably more stable and fluid. OIS does exactly what it says on the tin.
Much of the new camera software is still being tested, and the full power of the iPhone 7 Plus dual-lens will be unlocked later this year.
The Power Inside
As expected, Apple debuted a new Axx processor in the iPhone 7 family. The A10 Fusion system on chip has multiple processors that run at different speeds - you can have performance when you need it and endurance at other times - a trick that Qualcomm has used for some time in its SnapDragon series of system on chips. Comparing the iPhone 7 to the older iPhone 6 devices and you can see that Apple has made a significant increase in terms of performance. Brian Chen for the New York Times:
The most compelling improvement on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus is the sharp speed increase. Spurred by faster chips, everything — switching between apps, opening the camera — feels snappier. The iPhone 7 battery also gets about two hours more juice than the 6S.
Using the app Geekbench 4, I tested the speeds of the iPhone 7, 6S and 6. The iPhone 7 was 39 percent faster than the 6S and 114 percent faster than the 6. So people who bought the 6S last year can probably skip upgrading to the 7, but those holding onto a 6 and anything older will benefit from a tremendous performance gain.
Final Thoughts
Apple has taken some risks on the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus - such as the headphone jack removal - but the risks are there to help take the flak ahead of the true next-generation iPhone to be launched next year. Chris Velazco for Engadget:
None of these improvements on their own are terribly exciting, but together they make for a pair of phones that are more than the sum of their parts. Then again, where's the envelope-pushing? Where's the Apple that upended an industry? It's surely still there, locked behind closed doors that won't be opened again for another year. In the meantime, we're left to consider this year's work.
If you can get over the all-too-familiar design and the no-headphone-jack thing, then the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are serious contenders for best smartphones, period. Note that I used the word "best," not "most innovative" -- neither of these devices is groundbreaking.
The iPhone 7 family is safe, a business as usual update to a stately line of smartphones that the geekerati will love without hesitation. There's enough change to merit a new handset, the sales will continue, and steps towards the next revolution have been taken... but this is not the revolution you've been looking for.
Now read the twenty-one ways Apple can change your life with the iPhone 7...
